Residents of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota have to travel for miles to buy convenience foods. Entrepreneurial tribes are reclaiming traditional methods to combat nutrition challenges.
Photograph: Newsport

For many residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, getting to a supermarket requires a two-hour drive to Rapid City. It’s an expensive trip for people living in the third poorest county in the US. Many residents have no access to transportation, leaving only one option: on-reservation convenience stores that stock processed, long-shelf-life foods.

To combat these poor nutrition options, many tribes are reclaiming traditional foods as a way to correct severe health and economic disparities. All across the country, Native American entrepreneurs are combining traditional values with common-sense business strategies to tackle hunger, unemployment and unsustainable food production practices.

Pine Ridge didn’t become a food desert by itself. Along with other tribes throughout the country, the Oglala Sioux endured generations of war, forced removal and assimilation policies that dismantled traditional economies and food systems.

The reservation system prompted dramatic changes in the diet of Native peoples in the US. Restricted or prevented altogether from traditional hunting and agriculture practices, many tribes were forced instead to accept government food relief programs that distributed basic staples heavy on salt, sugar and fat. The rapid change in diet, aided more recently by fast food and more sedentary lifestyles, have contributed to an epidemic of diabetes, obesity and other health problems in Indian Country.

Like others who have turned to local, sustainably produced foods to effect social change, Native Americans are embracing the so-called food sovereignty movement, a term coined in the 1990s by the international peasant group La Via Campesina, to restore culture and economic autonomy.

“There’s a cultural revolution going on in Indian Country, reconnecting people to the rituals of where food came from, why food is sacred,” said Mark Tilsen, co-founder of the Pine Ridge-based food producer Native American Natural Foods.

Tilsen and his business partner, Karlene Hunter, are at the forefront of this revolution. Launched in 2007, their business is now one of the most successful Native-owned food companies in the country. Its primary product, Tanka Bar, is a line of energy bars made from prairie-fed, antibiotic-free buffalo meat and based on a traditional Oglala recipe. The natural and organic market research firm Spins ranks it as the third best-selling jerky in US natural supermarkets.

According to Tilsen, tanka means large or great, and conveys the idea of tremendous or generous acts for the benefit of others. The name is a vehicle for telling not only the story of the company, but of their people’s struggle for survival and self-determination after the government oversaw a mass extermination of the buffalo in the late 19th century. As their main food source was driven to near extinction, Plains peoples were forced onto reservations.

Tilsen and Hunter didn’t set out to build a better energy bar. They wanted to support Native buffalo producers who were working to restore the sacred animal to the prairie. And they wanted to boost the economy and health of Pine Ridge.

“This energetic movement is really taking stock of how food impacts the health of Native peoples, but also the economy and social existence of Native communities,” said Raymond Foxworth, vice president of grant making and development for the First Nations Development Institute (FNDI), which supports tribal economic development programs.

There’s a cultural revolution going on in Indian Country, reconnecting people to the rituals of where food came from.

Mark Tilsen, Native American Natural Foods

Particularly in the last five years, Foxworth said, the food movement in Indian Country has expanded to include more intertribal collaboration and the development of new business models and best practices. Demand has grown so much that between 2011 and 2014, the institute was able to fund just 7% of the proposals they received.

The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, which runs its own organic farm and retail food business, has emerged as a leader in promoting collaboration and knowledge-sharing between tribes, said Foxworth. The Oneida Nation provide mentoring and trainings on topics like environmental stewardship and livestock management, and co-hosts an annual Native food sovereignty summit with FNDI.

While the first priority of tribes is often to educate the community about traditional food production and ensure access to fresh, healthy foods, many tribes go on to develop businesses.

In tiny Nambé Pueblo near Santa Fe, New Mexico, for example, a community farm supplies corn, beans, chiles and buffalo meat to its senior center and to individual families. Meanwhile, Santa Ana Pueblo has started a successful business selling products made of blue corn and other traditional Pueblo foods.

Interest extends far beyond tribal enterprises. Freddie Bitsoie, a Navajo chef, recently produced a television pilot for a cooking show, Rezervations Not Required, touring the US and Canada to highlight the distinct culinary traditions of different cultures.

“A lot of people believe that Native people are all the same,” Bitsoie said. “So I can be a conduit for letting people know about different tribes and keeping that food story going.”

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Lois Ellen Frank is another successful culinary entrepreneur. She’s a Native American food historian and owner of Red Mesa Cuisine, a Santa Fe catering company specializing in indigenous dishes from throughout the Americas. Her meals feature local, seasonal foods, purchased whenever possible from Native producers.

Frank, who is Kiowa, thinks benefit corporations could be the way forward for indigenous businesses that have social and environmental sustainability goals. “I think that’s moving in the direction of a more Native way of being,” she said.

But reservation-based entrepreneurs face many challenges. Financing is hard to come by, a circumstance compounded by the difficulty of attracting private investment on tribal lands held in trust by the federal government.

Courses in business administration and entrepreneurship are scarce on and around reservations, although organizations like FNDI, Intertribal Agriculture Council and the Native CDFI Network are working with universities, tribal colleges and tribal governments to extend more technical and business training opportunities.

Indian Country faces unique logistical and bureaucratic complexities. Remote locations, bad roads and unreliable power and telecommunications make it difficult for some tribes to easily access supply chains and get goods to market. And the complicated constellation of federal, state and tribal laws regulating production and sale of agricultural goods can be particularly cumbersome for small producers, which have greater challenges in navigating the bureaucracy.

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Janie Simms Hipp studies and acts on these challenges as director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law. The think tank was established to help tribes develop policies and models to strengthen sustainable food systems.

Hipp, who was previously senior adviser for tribal relations to US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, says she sees potential everywhere she looks – Native agriculture is now a $3bn market, and the number of Native American-operated farms jumped 135% between 2002 and 2012, according to the most recent USDA agricultural census. But there are enormous unmet funding needs, and gathering data to fully assess those needs is costly.

Despite the barriers, Hipp remains hopeful, especially when she considers the growing interest among young people. Next month, the initiative will host 75 students at its second annual youth leadership summit, including high school students already managing agriculture-related businesses.

“We’re at a turning point on these issues in Indian Country,” she said. “My goal is to have enough resources out there for intensive business training, and farm and food entrepreneurship and financial education training – at every level.”